


i'm a counterfeit, a hypocrite (a piece of shit)

by oncewewerezombies



Series: Miracrail Month [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society (Homestuck), Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Anxiety, Bigotry & Prejudice, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings, Feelings Jams, Financial Issues, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Poverty, References to Addiction, Self-Doubt, Self-Hatred, Shoosh-Papping, Struggling, Tragicomedy, body issues, food insecurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 02:30:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20202262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.-Troll Snoop Clawbeast





	i'm a counterfeit, a hypocrite (a piece of shit)

**Author's Note:**

> 2\. Feelings Jam

You slam the door behind you, slap your palms to your face over your mouth and _scream_ into them. It doesn't do much to muffle you, as much as you were kind of hoping it would. Fuck. FUCK. You hate your life, you hate everything about it, and you're too much of a shitty dumbass to try and see a way where you could make it better. You're going to be doomed to smelling like cheap grubfries and dealing with your succulent simmering boil of a manager for the _rest_ of your _life_. Nothing you do is going to make this a life actually worth living, instead of just crawling through the drudgery of poverty like the shit-sucking mud-kicker that you inherently are, in the centre of your true fucking being. Fuck! FUCK!!! FUUUCK.

Someone next door bangs on the adjoining wall in protest at your infuriated internal screaming made external in a moment of absolute personal weakness, and something in your thinkpan just _snaps_. Hopping around on one foot and swearing incoherently, you manage to jerk your shoe off and throw it in their direction. It bangs into the wall in the rough area of where you think your asshole next door showed his disapproval of your self-expression, and there isn't another bang from him to follow up. Good; that fucking asshole is louder any night of the week. Like he's got the room to say _shit_ to you about a single fucking scream of pure frustration. Breathing hard, you rake your fingers fast and hard through the shitty crop of shitty curls you've been ignoring for the past few weeks. You need your thinkpan strands shaved; you don't have the money for it; you don't have the _fucking resources_ for so much shit, and you need - _Gamzee_ needs - 

God, things were meant to be better when the two of you were living together. Not worse. You're fucking this up. Just like you fuck everything up. You hate this, you know you have to scrape the money together so that you can afford Gamzee's withdrawal meds and therapy but you still need to pay the rent, both of you need to _eat_, and there's only so long that even Gamzee, monumental slackjawed dope that he is, is gonna believe that your manager is giving you free meals at work when your hungersack sounds like it's going to crawl out of your chokepipe and start finding something to eat off its own power. If it only fucking _would_, then you wouldn't feel guilty or have to think about exactly how it was assuaging its hunger. 

It's enough to make someone think about turning to fucking - you don't know - e-camera work. Like anyone would want to see you and your tubby misshapen body or would vaguely consider paying for the privilege. But who the fuck knew, right, there's a lot of fucking freaks out there. And who ever understood humans anyway? Maybe one of them would want to become your glucose guardian. What the fuck are you going to do? They cut your shifts again and you - Gamzee - you're meant to be the responsible one of this partnership. You're the one who's meant to make things _work_. Gamzee's just. Fuck. He is whatever the fuck he is, and you're so fucking pale for it you could vomit endlessly into the loadgaper if you thought about it for too long. Never to be seen again without your porcelain throne, just dragging the fucking thing around with you like a bosom buddy so you could throw up occasionally for the rest of your fucking life.

You take off your other shoe so you're not standing in the entryway like some kind of one-shoed asshole, and go over to grab the other one, put them together in the place where they go by the ingress-portal. Things like that are important, helps you keep your shit together. You unzip your sensible black with grey piping windbreaker and hang it next to Gamzee's hideous puffy purple monstrosity. Fuck, it's cold out now. You go out when it's dark and by the time you head back, it's usually dark again. 

You hate your life. If it can even be called that. It's just constant vapid ant-like struggle, where you count smaller and smaller amounts of money and try to make them fit everything that you both actually need. You're second generation hatch, so it's not like you knew Alternia at all and you're _aware_ of the status of your hemocolour within the Empire, what the fuck it would mean for you (quick and brutal government sancitioned murder, ha), but fuck. Gamzee would have had to have things better. He was purple, right? That was pretty cold. Maybe the reason shit went wrong for trolls here was just they weren't meant to be here, on Earth (maybe it's just you, it's always you, you're such a fucking _fuck up_, can't even do this right) (you can't look after your palemate, you're a piece of shit, you don't deserve to have a moirail).

"Hey, bro." The only thing that makes your meaningless existence barely worth going through the motions for appears in the recreationblock door, wearing that stupid. _Stupid_. Fucking apron that you're pretty sure that someone gave him as a joke. It's meant for a female human and it is just _so_ fucking pink, it has a stitched in purrbeast wielding a spoon on it, you hate it so much. He loves it. He has no taste. Gamzee fucking Makara, the bane of your existence, the cause of a thousand pan-aches. You pity him so much it hurts you on the inside and the idea that he's caught you throwing a tantrum like a misbehaving wiggler makes you freeze like you've been caught in something more intense than a little walking frond-cover throwing. What if he figures out how badly shit is going?

"What are you looking at, nook for brains?" you snap defensively, going on the attack in a tried and true way while some other small part of yourself _shrieks_ for you not to do it. You have to. He knows too much about you, you've got to get under his defences and get him off guard, so he doesn't try to get under yours. You're meant to be the one who takes care of him, not the other fucking way around. He has to think that you know how to handle things or else - or else - what the fuck use _are_ you? "What are you - no, _put me down!_" you shout, voice going embarrassingly high as he moves forward from just looking at you to coming to pick you up in his arms. "Put me DOWN! This is humiliating, I won't fucking - you PANROTTED loadgaper licking monument to clown assholery, don't -"

You're fighting him the whole time, but he's got those long coolblood arms and way much more strength that any one troll should be allowed. You scree as fucking loudly as you can manage, in the best traditions of your crabdad (may his shell rest in peace), but no matter what, Gamzee doesn't let go of you. You think you bite him at one point, you're just kind of out of your pan at that point. Everything has just crested in a wave, and all the shit you've been worrying about, agonising over, with someone physically holding you down and kicking off all your aggression reflexes? It's too fucking much to deal with. Even if that someone is your moirail and you're hurting him, you know you're hurting him but you can't stop yourself. Your voice is shouting somewhere, spitting insults designed to wound while you claw and bite and kick. He just hangs onto you tighter, carrying you swiftly through the small apartment until you're in your respiteblock and then simply _drops_ the two of you into the scrawny, misbegotten pile you've scraped together in a corner of the room.

Something honks under his ass, and somehow the sound makes everything even worse in regards to the whole situation.

You scuffle and fight and sink your fangs into the skinny muscle of his frond as he holds onto you like if he lets you go you'll disappear, and curls up around you like a wiggler with a plushy Fiduspawn toy. Something off-market probably. You're not good enough to be a genuine article of anything. After a while, the need to fight oozes out of you like the disappointing sludge puddling beneath a cracked genedonation bucket, and you can feel the tears starting to come. Prickling and stinging at the corners of your visionbulbs, because of course now that's the obvious next step. First you fuck up your moirail just because he says hello to you and then you cry about it. What a fucking piece of shit you are. Why does he want to be with you? Why would anyone want to fucking be with you? 

"Get off," you say again, but without any heat to it as you try to push his grasping frond off where it's planted around your waist. Purple blood slowly creeps its way down his skin where you've bitten him, and your gaze skitters away from it like a frightened scuttlebeast when the light comes on. That. You did that (and it's not all you did, you disgusting freakish piece of wormvomit). You squirm, uncomfortably reminded of the fact that despite the issue of never having enough food, somehow you're _still_ fat. He's just a skeleton of bones pared back with a lathe under you, and you can feel his pointy chin digging into the curve between your neck and shoulder. God. "Gamzee, you _fuck_-" Your voice cracks humiliatingly, and you try to stifle the sob that you know is coming next.

"Shhhh shooshashooshashoosh," he hums against your neck and rocks you in his arms, cool body plastered to yours as he clings to you like he could meld the both of you into one being. Why is he doing this? He shouldn't be comforting you, you fucked up, you - you bit him and fucking - what is _wrong_ with you? You already know what's wrong with him. "Shooshashoosh, shoosh, my pale love, my dearest, my diamond, Karkat, Karkat, shhhhh, hushabye, shhooosh shooosh shhh..."

"_Fuck_ you," you choke out and then give up on pretending like you're not going to cry and sob like a wiggler that fell over on the playground, not only skinning their knee but dropping their cone of frozen dairy-substance confectionery into the dirt. It's been so hard, and you don't know what you're doing. No matter what the fuck you do, nothing comes out better for either of you. You're such a fucking failure. You cry so hard it hurts, oculars burning and aeration sacks protesting at each heaving gulp of air you strain for in between wracking sobs. 

Once you've cried yourself out, somehow you feel better. Gamzee hums softly to himself, a deep rumble in his chest that's not a purr but it's in the same lineage, and presses his lips to your sweaty forehead in a kiss. Despite how hard you'd been fighting to get away from him to start, this time you turn into him, pressing your hot face up against his cooler skin. Long skinny fingers stroke over your back softly, over and over. God. You hate him, why is he ok with this? Why does he even like you? You're never nice to him. It's fucked up codependency and if you were a kinder, healthier troll, you'd break this sham of a moirallegiance right the fuck now. Let him find someone who really really could take care of him, and be everything that he deserves. But you're not, so you won't. He's _yours_. He's all you've got. 

"Some fucking thing got you all fretted to a rare motherfucking thinness, Karbro," he hums slowly, and he sighs like he carries all the burdens of the world on his skinny fucking shoulders. You headbutt him gently in the chest, using your nubby horns to your advantage. He kisses one of them, and your whole body almost spasms. That's - _oh_ \- that's fighting dirty, that fucking clownfuck, how dare he. He _knows_ how sensitive your horns are! "Y'wanna like I should go and sort them out? I could show them a real fucking _mirthful_ way of _being_, make them realise _all their motherfucking_....sins."

"You're not doing anything of the fucking sort, you fuck up," you say almost on automatic, and reach out to stroke his cheek. Ok, so you're pretty sure most of the shit pundits put out about trolls being naturally violent and animalistic is just ways to make sure none of you have civil rights that count for shit or ever get to do anything that pays more than minimum wage (or below), but Gamzee's...fuck. Lusii aren't really accepted on Earth as it fucking is, and you know Gamzee's lusus fucked off when he was _really_ young. The goat-headed beast had probably died of fucking pollution related illness, the way most large oceanic lusii had over the past decade - another reason why anyone purple and down is so fucking fucked up. The thing is, Gamzee has problems. Before he met you, he'd been eating sopor. Between the sopor and the shit you've heard about purplebloods in general, you're not sure just where the anger issues came from but it's probably somewhere in between. If Gamzee is talking about going to sort someone out - they'll be very aware of just how they've been sorted out at the end of it, and Gamzee would probably be dead from some fucking oinkbeast in blue's bullet. _Fuck_ cops. Going to jail would be the _better_ end game in that scenario. "Shh."

"Maybe, but if I shush up, you gonna talk, my best motherfucking friend," Gamzee says with that rare streak of implacability that he can disconcertingly show at times. You'd hesitate but fuck. Maybe it's. Shit. Your eyes catch sight of his blood again, and a wave of remorse and self hatred makes you huddle down in your moirail's arms. You. You'd done that. What an asshole you are. Fucking waste of space. You don't deserve anything nice you get access to, you always manage to fuck it up. "You been needing to get your jam on for weeks now, but y'ain't been in the right kinda fucking place for it." He presses a cool, firm thumb into your hornbed and your bones turn into hot water; somewhere far off, you hear yourself _moan_ like the cheapest kind of palestar you'd watched in porn videos before you had access to the real thing. "Brother, _tell me what's on your mind_."

It's the soft kiss he places on the inside of your wrist that does it for you, and you spill _everything_ in the most sickening deluge of self-pitying worrying onto your moirail. It's like vomit, just pouring out of you and into Gamzee's auricular clots. You hate yourself even as you're saying it, how worried you are, how the fucks at work are killing you slowly, that you've been lying about having meals outside your shared hive. You just want to do better by him. You want him to have what he needs, and you're cheerfully ready to roast yourself over hot coals to see he has everything he could ever want. Not telling him how shitty you're feeling has been the worst thing, but you didn't want to get him feeling fucked up over the way things were, financially, for the two of you. It was better if just one of you was fucked up, right? That had to be right. 

He listens, face grave under his smiling paint and paps you softly when you run out of breath for your snot-filled confession. You can't keep looking him in the eyes, so you ramble most of it to his chest, maybe the side of his neck. The whole time he just hums or sighs, you can feel his chest lift and fall under the side of your face. Maybe you cry a bit more. It's fucking fine, ok? If you can't cry on your moirail, than who the fuck could you ever cry on? By the time you're finished, you're a snuffly dehydrated mess and his shirt is a wet sopping rag clinging to his thin frame. 

You're such a fucking mess.

"Beloved," he says, and you snorfle, not laughing but just kind of snorting. How can he call you something like that, after all you've done? You've been lying to him, that's all it is. Lying, and fucking - _abusing_ him - He puts a finger to your lips, looking sternly down at you like he has the right to judge what you've done. As if he wasn't a former sopor-addict and general all around fuck up. His job brings in even less money than yours does, even with the cut shifts you've been suffering from. "_Beloved_, my best and most pale..." He rubs his cheek up against yours, smearing your face with paint and you squawk weakly in protesting. Horrorterrors above and fucking below, that always feels _disgusting_, you don't care how pale you are for this vile excuse for clownmanity. "Don't worry so fucking much."

"Don't -" You splutter, absolutely appalled at this nugget of pure shit that he's trying to pass off as a pearl of fucking wisdom. "Don't worry _so fucking much?!_ Yeah, that'll be fine, won't it, when we're out on the streets, starving and completely fucking fucked up like an orphan in some Dickensian novel," you snap, trying to lift yourself out of his arms and the pile. His fingers dig into your ribs and you yelp, collapsing back onto him before he rolls you both so you're pinned underneath his sparse frame. Somewhere in the pile, a clown horn gives up what sounds like its last wheezy honk. "Gamzee. You utter _fucking_ moron. Saying something like that isn't a fucking plan."

"Maybe not so much a plan as a motherfucking philosophy, my most pale invertebrother," he says in a calm voice that gets right under your skin, like crumbs in a blanket. He pushes his forehead against yours, gently pushing while his long (stupidly elegant, and completely undeserved) horns angle forwards like they could have leaned against yours. If you'd had anything worthy of the fucking name, instead of the rounded bumps you actually fucking have. "Things will motherfucking work their way out and besides; we got friends we can ask."

"Friends with their _own_ problems," you insist raggedly. Who the fuck are you going to ask for money? The one who's probably the richest out of all of you is Vriska, and _fuck_ ever asking a Serket for anything. You'd rather starve to death in the gutter. Kanaya would give you money, maybe, but she's finally gotten a chance to get her clothing business off the ground - you're not going to ask for money she could use for capital. You can't think of anyone else who's in a cosy enough financial position that you'd ask them for a loan. Sollux, but you'd rather die. You just want him to be just. You want him to be your _friend_, not your saviour. It's not a role the goldblooded fucker is suited for anyway. The point being, you can't ask Sollux for something like that, besides, you're pretty sure he's in severe fucking debt for the college courses he's taking. So he doesn't have anything to give anyway. 

"Money ain't all a motherfucker can ask for," he rolls on, unperturbed, then grimaces like he's suddenly tasted something rotten. You're morbidly sure it's something to do with you, especially since he rolls away from you a bit and you scramble to lie on top of him so you're both still close together. You don't want to not be touching him. You very carefully don't think about it, you just do it. "You know how I got that need to get the shit out from my pan in artistic meandery, right?"

"Your therapist said it was good for you, what's your point?" you snap, and you clutch at his t-shirt tighter, winding the sodden material around your fingers. His hand comes down on your head in what's probably meant to be a soothing caress, and you growl into his throat. This _fucker_. If you weren't so fucking pale for him, you'd kill him on the spot. "Come _on_, chucklefuck, spit it out."

"And ain't that a thing for you to say to me, my close-mawed diamond, who been keeping all this hurtful shit close to himself without a single word to his palemate," he says in this terrible gentle voice that makes you flinch.

"It was for your own good," you mutter, and look anywhere but into his eyes. You can't take it. Fuck. It'd be just true to form that even with the most pitiable reject in the local Trolltown, you'd still be fucking this up beyond repair. 

"All things being as they fucking may - I had a chat on with _Strider_," he says with distaste, like the word hurts him to have in his mouth. Your eyes fly open and you prop yourself up on his chest with your elbows, looking down at him where before you'd both been lying down in the pile curled up with each other.

"But you fucking hate Dave!" you blurt out, as though he didn't know that himself. You just can't imagine any reason why your moirail would talk with Dave fucking I'm too cool for school Strider, for any reason. Apparently at some point Dave sent him a Youtube link to ICP, and that had just been the end of everything for Gamzee. You don't get it yourself, but you don't believe in bullshit clown gods either. 

"So I do." His mouth snaps shut for a moment, and Gamzee looks up at the ceiling before sighing and going soft under you again. As soft as a pile of bones and sticks like him can be, anyway. "And so I have a motherfucking _right_ to do so, blasphemous motherfucker as he is..." He grumbles to himself for a moment, before rousing and carrying on with whatever the fuck his point is. You're fascinated enough that you don't interrupt, sniffing a little still and wiping at your eyes with the back of your hand. You think you have a headache. "Anyway. So I up and asked a motherfucker how to make money off shit on the net. He makes stuff, right? So I'm making stuff too, and I wanted to -"

"You what?" You interrupt even though you'd sworn to yourself that you wouldn't, and he just gives you a _look_. For once Gamzee is being the mature one in a situation, and it's offputting enough that you shut your fucking ignorance-shouter. 

"Motherfucker, I got him to show me how to set up a patreon and ko-fi and motherfucking all," your moirail ploughs on, and takes a breath. You can feel him shiver, like admitting this has cost him something and you pap his cheek gently to encourage him. You want to hear what's coming next. "So - so, maybe it ain't all much money as yet but it's not _nothing_," Gamzee says grimly, as though you're going to be mad or something. Why the fuck would you be mad? "Maybe it can help a lil, more than working down at the warehouse can anymotherfuckingway, and I like it better. Just...a brother ain't big in any scene yet but he's - I've got commission posts going and what the fuck ever, someone even might buy one one of these nights..."

"Gamzee," you say with a lot of feeling in your voice, and he looks at you. Eyes narrowed a little bit, like he's waiting for you to tell him how stupid he was. Fuck. You're too fucking lucky. "That's fucking _amazing_."

"You really think so?" he murmurs, and goes purple at the ears like some kind of fucking adolescent. God, he's so adorable you could puke. "Some people seem to like what I do, I ain't mind selling it if, if it helps, Karbro. Most shit I just make to throw away as it motherfucking is."

"No, that's amazing, you're amazing," you insist raggedly, and cup his face in your hand. Looking at him, just really looking. There'd been a problem and you hadn't wanted to talk to him about it, or even admit that it had been a problem...but he'd gone to find a way to fix it anyway. Fuck. You're so pale for this fucking clown, it's like a fucking disease in your pusher. Hollowing out your chest with how much you feel it. "Tell me all about it."

"Well..." he drawls, and he shifts under you in the pile until you're both comfortable. Maybe what he's planning on will never take off but it's something you hadn't thought he'd ever be able to think of. You're an asshole. "You know I just want to be helping a motherfucking brother out, right?" He brings his hand up to cup the back of your head, pressing your foreheads together again, breath mingling. He needs to brush his fangs, you notice, his breath smells like old food but yours probably doesn't smell much better. "Ain't meant to be all you, Karbro. It's gotta be me, and you, together. You feel me, best friend?"

"Yeah." You gulp shakily, because he's right and you're a terrible fucking moirail. You should have been telling him this stuff from the beginning. "Yeah. It's you and me."

"Mmm, that's words to soothe a motherfucker all the way down, most beloved," he sighs like you've just shooshpapped him into a stupor and you flush. It's hot all across your face. He's such a fucking drama queen. "So let me tell you about all this shit I had an idea on and hooked a hornless blaspheming fuck into helping me with..."

Your breathing still feels unsteady, but you let Gamzee cuddle you and murmur in his low hoarse voice all about the plans he's got. The hopes he has for this. Maybe...who knows, maybe it will even work out. At least it'd be another form of income.

"Gamzee," you say, pushing in again to his speech like an asshole, the way you always do. There's a sort of buzzing in your auricular sponges, but you can't let this go.

"Mmhmm, Karbro?"

"I'm going to find a different job," you say out loud, and feel the lurch of hysteria inside you. You squash it down. So what if it's change? Change is just change, it's not a death sentence. It can't be worse than things are now. And you have experience and shit, not like when you were looking for this job. Maybe Pyrope will help you write up a CV that'll make people's eyes pop. In a good way. Not a bad way, Jesus fucking Christ. "I can find another fucking place to work, it'll probably be just as terrible..."

"But hey, maybe it won't be?" He nuzzles into your neck, getting more vile clownpaint smeared against your skin. You just sigh, like you're terribly beleaguered. Too put upon to even squawk. "I'll pray for you, bro."

"That is - _absolute fucking bullshit, don't you dare_," you hiss through your clenched fangs, and you feel your relationship find a new steady footing as he honks his terrible laugh and hugs you even tighter. Fuck, somehow this is your fucking life. You and this credulous, mirthful Messiah believing dipshit.

You wouldn't change one fucking thing.


End file.
